


Ex Ovo Omnia

by stalksoftly



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, Intersex Character, M/M, Pining, josh's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-23 20:24:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9674705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stalksoftly/pseuds/stalksoftly
Summary: Tyler Joseph is, by some definition, famous, but not in the way he'd like to be. Open up any medical journal on the subject of 5-alpha-reductase deficiency and you'll find his picture, head shorn, limbs hanging awkwardly on the sides of his exposed body, a black bar hiding wide, tired eyes in a mock attempt of anonymity.





	1. Needle

**Author's Note:**

> Russian translation by Anna K available here!: https://ficbook.net/readfic/5684735

Tyler was born twice. 

Once, as a girl, with her face torn wide in a piercing shriek, in the stark white of a hospital room in Columbus on December 1st, 1988, and again, sixteen years later in the same hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness as a lanky teenage boy with bloodied knees and a concussion. 

Maybe the signs had always been there. Maybe they had been smothered by the wishful thinking of his parents. Maybe they'd been shrouded by Tyler herself, by her insistence on lining her underwear with pads anyway, where no bouquet of bloody poppies blossomed. Maybe it was all willful ignorance, a postponing of the inevitable, of the fate written in her- now his- stars. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Tyler says I do that. I'll try to keep this chronological, to recount his story with masculine, linear storytelling, the kind of traits the doctors and therapists in Tyler's life wouldn't find in his circular, feminine poems when they combed through them, trying to build a case about gender, about nature and nurture.

I'll do my best. 

Before the spark behind his eyelids jumped to life, Tyler had always been Tyler. His mother chose the name while he was still a guppy swimming inside her, while his father protested at her certainty of their child's gender. 

"It's not that I'm so certain it'll be a boy," she mused during one of their lighter arguments on the subject, resting a cup of tea on her slowly swelling belly and watching Tyler's kicks cast waves in her beverage.

She flexed her feet, propped on the wooden coffee table in a futile effort to ward off swelling, and cracked her toes. 

"'It?' Who are you calling 'it'?" Tyler's father interjected, playfully elbowing his wife. His face was crinkled with amusement, a tiny bit of sternness leaking through the cracks. "That's our baby girl you're talking about." 

"Stop!" she huffed, placing her tea on the arm of the couch so as not to burn her stomach with the shake of a giggle. 

"We don't know if it's a girl, either. But Tyler isn't gender specific- neither is Taylor, or Jaime, or Alex. I think there's something… noble about that, you know?" She tilted her head, but Tyler's father didn't know. 

"Alright, whatever," he said, crossing his arms in mock defeat. "But I get to name her brothers and sisters, alright?" His tone was insistent but laced with pleading.

 

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Why do you keep calling it a 'her', huh?" she said, snaking over a foot to gently jab into his side. "What makes you so sure?" 

Caught in the sudden onslaught of daydreams of a prim and proper girl, her face a blur between his wife and himself, clad in pink and clutching a doll, coming at him with reaching arms, and the frightened, hushed 'Daddy, I had a nightmare' drifing from her pout, his arms wrapping around her to cast away the fictional demons in her mind, Tyler's father answered absentmindedly, "Just have a feeling."

\-- 

I am, in every sense of the word, superstitious, maybe even bordering on paranoid. Spilled salt sends shivers down my spine, I'll take a detour around ladders to get on stage, and I won't touch the Ouija board Tyler doodled on a sheet of notebook paper one Halloween. 

But I can't keep my hands off black cats. Soft, furry creatures can't possibly be omens of bad luck. 

I'm getting carried away again. 

My belief in superstition- Tyler will chide me for this, despite his own tendency to pour over his bible late into the night, calloused fingertips guiding his eyes over and in between lines for some kind of spark, some kind of evidence to fuel his faith. 

He's not much better than me, it's just that his sense of mysticism takes on a different form. His belief is always in the abstract, like a mist clouding his thoughts. Mine's more like raindrops, maybe hail, completely tangible and pattering against my skin. 

So, Tyler will definitely chide me for including this next part, but it knocked the breath out of me the first time he whispered it to me from under the sheets. 

Maybe it means something, maybe an old wive's tale knew more about Tyler's future than the doctors at OhioHealth Methodist could fathom. 

Before Tyler was born, his grandmother performed a ritual on his mother, the same one she had performed on all her children, and even her sisters' children, and later, her children in-law. 

No one knows how the tradition began or what ignited her to start it; something she picked up in the old country, from her own mother? A woman of few words and no nonsense, no one ever dared to ask her. 

But she dutifully performed her little ritual on all the family's expecting women, save for herself, because she thought rummaging around in her own womb for answers to be bad a bad omen. 

She found herself with a 100% success rate, twelve predictions correct out of twelve.

When everyone had moved to the living room to unbutton their pants after gorging themselves on a Sunday meal prepared from the old hand-written recipes of Tyler's grandmother's cookbook, their bellies almost as round and stout as Tyler's mother's, Granny pulled out a small sewing basket from beneath the sofa. 

After listening to Tyler's parents bicker over the gender of their impending child, yet both refusing again and again to find out for sure during one of many sonograms, preferring a tense and slightly flirtatious stalemate in their argument, Granny had had enough. 

She hoped to put the frivolities to rest, knowing that the success rate of her ritual had earned some measure of respect in the family, even silencing the sceptics. 

Surely this would end their discussions and decide once and for all what the gender of their unborn child would be.

Granny pulled a needle out of a small, red pin-cushion and tucked it between her withered lips as she unwound a length of thread from one of many spools. With waning vision, she poked the thread through the eyehole of the needle mostly by feeling, and finally let the needle dangle from the thread pinched between thumb and forefinger. 

With great effort, she steadied her hand as the chatter in the room died down. 

Hand unmoving, the makeshift pendulum began to tip back and forth ever so slightly. Towards Tyler's mother's face, and back to her navel. North, then south, over his mother, over Tyler himself. 

Tyler's father smacked a hand over his face when he was declared loser in the stalemate. 

"Yeah, okay," he muttered with more bitterness than intended. "We'll see when the baby comes, okay? What could a needle possibly know?" 

But Granny found herself filled with conviction. A woman prone to stout silence, that night, she chanted, "Boy, boy, boy!" and the Cheshire twinkle in Tyler's mother's eyes revealed satisfaction. 

She poked a tongue out at her husband. He scoffed. 

In the hospital room three weeks later, no one would know that Granny had been right all along. 

Her winning streak would be declared broken. 

Tyler's father would cast her a defiant smirk over the pink wriggling bundle nestled in the crook of his neck. 

-

Tyler had always been Tyler, and Tyler was born 'Tyler Roberta Joseph' for the very first time in OhioHealth Methodist Hospital on December 1st, 1988, with a dainty _F_ scrawled into the blank spaces next to 'Sex:' in all her medical files. 

Sixteen years later, this Tyler would die in the very same place, a few floors up.

When the light flickered on in Tyler's eyes, she pressed them shut, tightly, and opened her mouth wide to call out like a banshee. Being torn from the comforting void of amniotic fluid and being thrust into the world wasn't her idea of a good time, if her shrieking was any indication. 

Twenty-eight years later, and he's still shrieking like that, maybe an octave or two lower, and I can't help but tease him about how he's still shrieking for the same reasons. 

He'll narrow his eyes and tell me to "fuck off" with all the bite he can muster from behind a smile. 

His mother found comfort in baby Tyler's shrieking, torn out of her own hazy delirium. She found comfort in the way it meant her lungs were full of life. 

The cries weren't out of place amid the hospital ward of female suffering, of women fighting through 20 hours of labor, of mothers holding lifeless infants, of young women who could never become young mothers, of girls clenching their teeth through ovarian torsions. 

On first glance, Tyler fit right in. 

On first glance, Tyler always fits right in. 

After being cut out of his mother's belly, Tyler was whisked away by doctors and nurses, who siphoned off snot and wiped away placenta, tested reflexes, counted fingers and toes. 

By all accounts, Tyler was a healthy baby. 

Even the doctor who open up his legs noticed nothing out of the ordinary in the clamshell between his- then, her- legs, but his thoughts wandered before he could delve deeper into his examination, before he found the extent of what Tyler's body had in store for her. 

Eyes trained on the nurse beside him and the clipboard pushing against her bust, creating a sharp line between her breasts, the doctor said, "A beautiful, healthy girl."

And so, the first Joseph family daughter was born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...inspired by my favorite book of all time, Middlesex.
> 
> I wanted to be more subtle with this but ah, fuck it. I hope it's not too weird. I'm going somewhere with this, I swear.


	2. Forest

Even though it's been years since Tyler, the girl, died, she still sneaks up on him like a childhood speech impediment.   
   
Sometimes, her dainty saunter will seize Tyler's legs, giving his hips a soft sway.   
   
Sometimes, he'll try to sweep her curtain of hair over his shoulder.   
   
Sometimes, he'll become pliant under my touch and bunch the fabric of my t-shirt on my chest with delicate fingers, like a ravished maiden.   
   
It's like she's always inside him, rattling the prison bars of his ribcage, yearning to be let out again.   
   
Years of conditioning is hard to undo.   
   
At first, Tyler overcompensated. When he finally came back into my life over drinks (malted whiskey for himself, a redbull for me) in a worn-down dive bar, he looked garish with the attempt of scruff facial hair.   
   
The large wrist-watch hanging heavily on his wrist only made it look more fragile.  
   
Fingers poking out of an oversized thrift shop coat made him look child-like.   
   
To me, Tyler looked like he was wearing a costume of a man- a bad Halloween costume at that.   
   
Tyler will still fight me on this.   
   
He insists it wasn't _that_ bad, that it was just hard for me to accept that he was no longer a cherubic face painted with smudged eyeshadow, no longer long lean legs coming out of a flowing skirt.   
   
I beg to differ.   
   
Tyler now? He passes. Even when he lets her shine through, lets girl-Tyler heave a breath of fresh air in his sheer kimono or floral shoes, he looks natural, comfortable, like Tyler should.  
   
Tyler, the girl, she passed too, in her own right.   
   
Tyler grew up as any girl would have in a Midwestern suburban household and, like most children, she was malleable and therefore had no reason to question her upbringing.   
   
Old photographs, the ones Tyler wouldn't let me flip through at first, they show an angel-faced toddler with a somber gaze, eyes blinded by flash, clutching a doll.   
   
When other babies, a sister, a brother, another brother, started to crowd her out of the focal point of photos, she blended in perfectly with her cascade of brown locks, her wide Cleopatra eyes.   
   
"Shut the fuck up," Tyler will tell me when I tell him he was a beautiful little girl, although he knows it's true.   
   
Before the virilization of puberty turned Tyler into a frantic bundle of nerves, pleading with her mother to get her darkening upper lip waxed, before the sprouting sea of bosoms in the classroom made her turn to padded bras, long before all this, Tyler was a beautiful little girl.   
   
In grade school, boys yanked her hair. Waitresses fished lollipops from their aprons to placed in her sprawled, starfish hands. Her mother spent hours braiding flowers into her hair, cooing over her beauty.   
   
Tyler thinks this is what made his descent into puberty particularly tumultuous.   
   
While the bodies of the girls around her seemed to soften and swell, Tyler felt stuck in time. 

Tyler remained angular, child-like, boyish.

She drifted into the background among the maturing girls around her.  
   
Boys stopped pulling her hair.   
   
Tyler is smart. Tyler's ability to self-reflect, to really go deep and find the root of the cancerous growths of his insecurities makes me feel, quite frankly, jealous.  
   
When Tyler explains his teenaged angst to me, he'll tell me it was because he- then, she- felt empty without external praise for her appearance. Raised a woman, she was suddenly deprived of one of the only things that she was taught would make her valid.   
   
She lacked the warmth, the femininity needed for that praise, and it corroded her self-worth until she became a shy, shuffling shadow of her former self.   
   
Tyler lagged behind her classmates in appearance, racing ahead in academics (mostly English, never Mathematics, which her parents would excuse, because, Tyler was a girl, right?) instead to assuage her anxiety.   
   
Tyler lagged behind, until she didn't.   
   
The first hairs started sprouting. She counted them daily, eagerly, awaiting the curves that would surely follow.   
   
The hairs didn't stop sprouting. She yanked out the hairs on her upper lip until she yanked out tears with them.  
   
Tyler lagged behind, until she towered over the girls in her grade.   
   
If boys had stopped pulling her hair before, they withdrew entirely when she started to outgrow them, too.  
   
Meant as a spiteful jab, one girl poked her side in History class and told her she'd be great at basketball.   
   
Tyler turned to her notebook. Tyler grew out her hair. Blocking out the uncaring gazes from outside, blocking out her anxious gaze from within, she turned to poetry.   
   
Later, with androgens and testosterone flooding her system in full, unbeknownst to her, Tyler found herself shaken by the same bouts of irritation her brothers displayed throughout their blossoming.   
   
Her sister was no more pleasant, although her hormonal aggression directed itself inwardly, and she would lock herself away and keep Tyler up well into the night with hiccupping sobs clattering out through the air vents.   
   
Tyler, filled with the hormonal aggression of a man and the societal model to be demure, soft, other adjectives for the caricature of a woman, she found her solace in the nonjudgmental realm of music.   
   
It started as the experimental tinkering on an old, re-gifted keyboard dug out of the garage as she and her brothers toiled through boxes to unearth an old basketball net.   
   
Tyler dragged the dusty thing inside and tapped a few keys, finding herself stirred by the gentle crooning coming from the speakers.   
   
Tentative experimentation would turn to impassioned hammering, from mellow lullabies exploding into screams pulled deep from the growing pains of adolescence pounding in her chest.   
   
I thank God every day for that old toy keyboard, picture myself anointing it with kisses the same way I anoint Tyler's face every day.   
   
With Tyler's discovery of music came his involvement in the church choir, and by extension, his involvement with me.  
   
I'm the drummer now, so people don't want to believe me when I tell them that I was in choir, too.   
   
They start to believe me when I tell them I preferred tapping my fingers against the music stand, driving my neighbors to the brink of insanity, to singing.   
   
They really believe me when I tell them I really preferred staring at the nimble girl they placed on the piano to singing. 

Hair always drawn around her face like she was trying to drown out the bright world of impressions around her, I mostly stared at her ski-slope nose, at the crooked row of teeth that showed itself when our choir director praised her.   
   
I wanted to tuck the curtains behind her ears and drink in everything she was hiding.   
   
\--   
   
I still find myself filled with regret.   
   
Tyler tells me there's nothing to regret, that regret is a waste of emotional energy in the grand scheme of things, so I never ask him if he regrets running away, regrets all the time we lost.   
   
According to him, everything had to unfold the way it did. He'll paint my cheek with kisses and tell me how we would have turned into an embittered, loveless couple if he'd stayed, if we'd grown up alongside each other.   
   
I try to let that placate me, but I still can't help but cling to the "what ifs"?  
   
What if I hadn't been so shy?   
   
What if I had had the courage to snake myself between Tyler and my brother?   
   
What if I hadn't taken out my childish, jealous aggressions on Debby?  
   
What if, what if, what if?   
   
The summer of my, our, her sophomore year of high school, the church arranged a sort of summer camp for the choir. We were all corralled into a shuttle bus and brought to the outer rims of the city, to the quiet, untouched forests, to glittering lakes, to quaint cabins.   
   
I'll admit that the first thing on my mind was the mysterious pianist, the girl hunched over a notebook in her lap the entire ride- maybe, on this trip meant for mingling, I'd drawn back the curtains, unfold something about this girl?   
   
Unfortunately, my brother had the same idea about her.   
   
Unfortunately, he was bold and brash in all the ways I couldn't be.   
   
Our first day at the camp, while most were peeling off clothing to reveal bathing suits tucked underneath, while boys were diving from ropes and creating violent waves, while girls tiptoed awkwardly over dead foliage and coaxed forth gentle ripples on the lake, Tyler was perched on the dock with her notebook.   
   
I was perched on the opposite end, with my feet dipped in the water.  
   
And Jordan, fucking Jordan? 

Jordan buzzed around her like a mosquito.   
   
I couldn't hear what they were talking about, but I knew that Jordan had somehow managed to make Tyler's laugh bubble out from behind her hair. 

With every sly brush of his fingertips against her tan shoulder, I bristled. My face burned, not from the sun. 

For days, Jordan did this. He hovered around her, prodded her with questions, growing bolder every time she gave him a soft smile, bold enough to tuck her hair behind one ear, bold enough to attack her with tickles until she shrieked for him to stop. 

I was in a constant state of agony. 

I had my own mosquito, though; her name was Debby. 

Although she was pretty, rounder and softer and sweeter than Tyler, she didn't take my fancy, but I welcomed her for the distraction. 

Although I knew that Tyler wasn't aware of me, I willed myself to dote Debby with the same childish flirtatiousness Jordan was pouring onto Tyler. 

Undeterred by the futility of my actions, I pressed on. I silently prayed that Tyler would find herself bothered in the way that I was bothered. 

Years later, Tyler will confirm by suspicions. From what he can recall now, no, he- then, she- didn't notice me then, didn't notice anyone, really, until the night we all undid years of Sunday school teaching in the abandoned cabin. 

I'm not getting ahead of myself. 

Jordan, my loving brother, was, and is, in every way my opposite. While I followed the plan laid out for us by camp counselors, taking part in rowing and archery and crafts, he skipped the activities that didn't suit him and took to exploring the woods. 

One night, as I was drifting into a fitful sleep after a long day of hot sun and bug bites, Jordan prodded me awake. 

“Josh,” he whispered, breath moist on my ear. 

I cringed, batting him away. 

“What do you want?”

“I found an abandoned cabin,” he persisted into my ear. “It's _so_ fucking creepy, I gotta show you. I'm gonna bring Tyler. You should bring Debby. Make it a double date.”

I saw the whiteness of his teeth bare in the dark as he grinned a me. 

So, he'd noticed, noticed what I'd been doing with Debby, and thought we could bond, as brothers, over our appreciation for the girls. 

He had no idea why I'd been doing what I'd been doing. 

–

After dodging the beams of the camp counselor's flashlights, we'd managed to rouse both the girls and convince them to join us on a trip into the inky darkness of the forest. 

The cabin Jordan had found by daylight was even more eerie in the dark, despite the light of his lantern. 

He clutched Tyler's hand to comfort her, so I clutched Debby's hand.  
   
He pulled her inside, so I pulled Debby inside. 

I undid the blanket in my arms, laying it over debris and cobwebs, while Jordan placed his lantern to the side. 

He took the initiative, sitting cross-legged on the blanket and we all crumpled around him. 

When Jordan pulled a lighter from the pocket of his basketball shorts, I knew what would come next. 

From another pocket, he retrieved a joint, dented and ugly, but still usable. He tucked it between his lips and ignited it, smoking clouding the already dim light inside the cabin  
   
Jordan passed the joint to Tyler, who took it between delicately manicured fingers. 

“You smoke?” I said. That's the first thing I said to Tyler. 

She didn't say anything to me. 

She shrugged passively and brought the joint to her lips, inhaling deeply. Judging by the tears rimming her eyes, I could tell she didn't smoke. 

Tyler has self-control, Tyler had self-control. 

Holding back the fire in her lungs, she exhaled slowly. 

She passed the joint to Debby, who, like my brother, puffed without problem. When she passed it to me, I waved her off. 

“I get paranoid,” I said, and Debby nodded, her expression unchanged. 

As the joint made its rounds, everyone around me became more languid. Conversations drifted off with waning attention spans. 

Soon, there was silence. 

Soon, I heard movement. 

Then, I saw Jordan snake his arm around Tyler. I did the same to Debby. 

When Jordan began to nibble at Tyler's jaw, I did the same to Debby. 

And so on, and so on. Hands roving under shirts, teeth clicking with hurried kisses, I mirrored my brother's actions with Tyler in my actions with Debby, my eyes trained on the forms in front of me instead of on the girl in my arms. 

In this way, I could project myself onto my brother, to feel what he felt, to feel what I desperately wanted to feel.

Debby whimpered and rolled beneath my touch, but all I could hear and feel was Tyler, five feet away from me, whimpering and rolling beneath Jordan's touch.

When Jordan had Tyler on her back, things shifted. Somehow, distracted by my voyeurism, I ended up with my back pressed against hardwood floor and Debby hovering over me. 

And suddenly, Tyler's eyes fluttered open and fixated on mine. 

While Jordan nibbled at Tyler's neck, Debby's hand skated under my shirt. When Jordan's hands skated under Tyler's shirt, she whimpered, “Stop”. Debby tried to bite me too, hard, and I flinched from her touch. 

Tyler's eyes were still trained on me.

When Jordan lifted her skirt, her lips parted. 

When Debby worked the buttons on my fly, I reach out a hand towards Tyler. 

When Jordan pushed aside her panties, Tyler crawled her fingers across the floorboards and met mine. 

The touch lasted only for a moment, but it reverberated through me. The touch lasted only for a moment, because when Jordan entered her, she cried out in pain and pulled her hand away to push him off. 

I pushed off Debby, who was still fumbling with my fly. 

“Jerk,” she huffed, jumping to her feet and stamping out of the cabin.

 

\--

Back in my bunk, I couldn't find sleep after what had transpired in the cabin. I turned over the memories in my head again again. Something cosmic had bound me to Tyler, something unspoken and intimate had happened between us. 

I had to know for sure.   
   
Too shy to bring myself to do anything nearly so brash in the daylight, I climbed down from my bunk in the dark.   
   
I waited.   
   
The choir of soft snores around me persisted.   
   
I pattered down the hall to Tyler's room, where I was met with more sawing breaths.   
   
I tiptoed towards Tyler's sleeping form, and waited.   
   
My heart pounding so loudly, I was sure it would rouse her.   
   
Tyler's breathing remained even.   
   
I dared a step forward.   
   
Another.   
   
I dared sit beside her form, my weight dipping the mattress and causing her to shift towards me slightly.  
   
Still nothing from Tyler. She seemed to be fast asleep.  
   
I trailed fingers over her cheek, admiring the soft rim of eyelashes, the light brush of stubble by her jaw. In the moonlight, she looked like milk and I wanted nothing more than to dip myself inside her.    
   
What I didn't know then is that Tyler was awake, silently willing me closer. Plagued by the same kind of insomnia, she'd seen me wander into the room.  
   
I brushed over her cheeks, jumped off the ski slope of her nose, pressed the pad of my thumb to her lower lip.   
   
I jumped when her mouth bunched into a pout, turning into a kiss against my finger. She opened one eye, and the corner of her mouth twitched into a smile.   
   
I smiled back.   
   
She laced a hand behind my neck and brought me down into a kiss, wet and fumbling and awkward and wonderful in our inexperience. 

When her sudden boldness faded and she became shy with her sloppy pecks, I darted a tongue between her teeth. She wasted no time, and lapped into my mouth with the same eagerness.

We evolved into a panting mess of limbs; when her hands pawed against my chest, my own hands began to explore, first over her t-shirt, then under it. 

When I began to lift it up, when I exposed her flat chest to the moonlight pooling in through the window, she froze.   
   
"My tits," she breathed into my mouth, all minty toothpaste and stale smoke.   
   
I stroked a thumb over her furrowed brow, trying to wipe away the apology knotted there.  
   
"I think they're beautiful," I said, voice choked with conviction.   
   
With her shirt bunched under her chin, I bent my head to place soft kisses over her heart. I darted a tongue over a nipple. When her breath hitched, I let myself pull one into my mouth and suck.   
   
At this point, she was rutting against me.   
   
I tucked my thumbs under the waistband of her sweatpants and her panties, and slowly started to pull, giving her time to back out, kick me away, tell me this was all a fluke and that she'd mistaken me for Jordan.   
   
Tyler lifted her hips to aid me as I unpeeled her.   
   
I pulled at her sweatpants, her panties, pulled them down over her legs until she kicked them to the floor.   
   
At this point, I tucked away everything I had attempted with Debby. Everything I'd heard about in the titters of the boy's locker room. Everything I'd found in risqué magazine articles.  
   
Guided by something otherworldly and primal, I trailed kisses down her abdomen, over the dancing valley of her navel, down to the mound of dark hair between her legs.   
   
Inspired by her reactions to my sucking her nipples, I decided to place a wet kiss on the mound of firm flesh peaking out from the forest of hair.   
   
"Mm," she agreed above me, her eyes fluttering shut.   
   
I smiled and blew a soft stream of breath over her, until she carded her hands into my hair.   
   
"Josh," she begged.   
   
I complied, bringing my mouth down around her stout crocus, the mound of ambiguous genitalia that drew forth no suspicions from me at the time, no suspicions, ever, really, until Tyler ran away months later.   
   
I sucked lightly, and she arched her back.   
   
I lapped my tongue against her, and she dropped back into the mattress.   
   
Even with the evident ecstasy I was pulling from her, I wanted to give her more, more, always more, I wanted to give her everything, so I brought up a hand to assist me.   
   
Before my fingers could breach her folds, she grabbed my wrist tightly.   
   
"Sore," she breathed, instead deciding to undulate her hips against my mouth.   
   
Her jagged cry in the cabin from before rang out in my mind and I accepted her explanation, thinking it had something to do with the loss of her innocence earlier that night, not knowing that I would never, ever enter her- now, him- at least, in this way.   
   
So, she tugged my hair and I sucked, I lapped, I kissed her until her stuttering breaths halted altogether and she mewled and writhed against me. 

When Tyler came down from her orgasm, she clapped a hand over her mouth. A roommate coughed in her sleep. She pressed a hurried kiss against the corner of my mouth and shooed me away. 

Tyler tells me this is when he really lost his innocence, when he tasted forbidden fruit and found himself hooked, hooked on me. 

I am, in every way, the luckiest man alive.   
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was all fine and good, yeah?
> 
> I have a lot of the next chapter done, and I'm ready to ramp up the angst.


	3. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me a while but it's 5k words soooo, forgive me.

I know what you're thinking. Didn't Jordan notice something amiss about Tyler's anatomy? Didn't I? Didn't her family, through diaper changes and accidental intrusions into the bathroom as she was showering? 

What about Tyler herself? 

In the hazy light of the cabin, Jordan didn't see a thing. Inexperienced, mind clouded with lust and pot, he'd just breached the folds of a virgin, lost his innocence, and that was enough. 

In the hazy light of infatuation, I didn't notice a thing either.

All I knew is that the mound between Tyler's legs would swell when she wanted me, all I knew is that I'd suck on it until she turned into a heap of curses above me. All I knew was that I couldn't enter Tyler, which I later filed away in my mind as some kind of conservative mindset, that maybe this would all change if, when we'd decide to marry. For the time being, the things we did were more than enough. 

As for her family, I have to give her mother credit. It's not like Tyler's anatomy as a baby was incredibly bizarre, with a red flag shining above her to indicate that oh- oh- oh no, they hadn't born a baby girl and maybe Granny, with her needle and thread, had been, in a sense, right all along. 

No, Tyler's crocus resembled a clam shell, like any other infant girl's, and only began to blossom with puberty. 

Swelling and growing by the day with the onset of androgens and testosterone, it began to deviate from the illustrations Tyler found in her biology textbook. 

So, Tyler? Did Tyler know? 

When I ask him about it now, he'll insist that he always felt it, always sensed that something was amiss. It's not that he had the extensive knowledge of intersex conditions, it's just that she'd, at the time, known that something tied her off from her mother, her sister. 

Something always left her with a feeling of ambiguity, something always left her feeling like she was pressing her square peg self into a series of round holes. Femininity somehow felt like a costume at times, one she always had to wear, something she hid behind to stay under the radar.

When she overheard her mother whispering to her father about how Madison had started her period, but how Tyler, the older sister, already 16, hadn't seemed to show any signs of the same, Tyler took action. 

A week later, she clutched her stomach and cried out in mock pain. 

A week later, she dug into her nose, already sensitive from the dry cold of winter, until she brought out a cascade of warm red and wiped it away with her own panties. 

Her mothers suspicions quieted. 

And Tyler knew. 

With the mound of flesh in her dark curls jutting out farther and farther by the day, with none of the aches and pains and genuine red streaks of menstruation staining her sheets, without the blossoming bosom, Tyler found herself on the hardwood floors before her bed, on her knees for hours until they bruised. 

She prayed and prayed. 

\--

After our night of bliss, I was worried that Tyler wouldn't acknowledge what I'd done to her in the moonlight. Maybe it had all been a dream, and I'd just imagined myself so bold. Maybe she'd find herself thinking she'd been ravished by an incubus in her dreams. 

I shuffled to the breakfast hall with my head ducked low, bracing for impact. 

I sat alone amid the sleepy sea of faces and munched on my waffles with my eyes cast down, not daring to scan the room for Tyler. 

As I was struggling through every bite, the mush of syrup somehow growing larger and drier in my throat, a form took their seat across from me. 

I glanced up.

Tyler.

“What's your name?” She asked. This was the first time she spoke to me directly. 

“Josh,” I answered, agape, the sticky mush of waffles dropping off my fork. 

“Josh,” she replied, turning the name over in her mouth, mincing it along with the cheap camp bacon she was pulling into her mouth. If the fine pink tip of her tongue trailing over her upper lip was any indication, she liked the taste. 

I smiled at her. 

Teeth crooked, she smiled back, and traced the toe of her Vans over my ankle under the table. 

\--

So, Jordan? 

Did Jordan spit on me, push me into the lake as some act of revenge to reclaim his masculinity, when he found out that I'd stolen away his girl? 

My loving brother, my loving brother with the taste for rebellion and his quick-wit and his brash smile, my brother hadn't been all that bothered. 

Jordan was my polar opposite in every way, and I thanked him for it silently.

I felt a twinge of remorse for my own burning jealousy when he'd been doing his best to literally and figuratively worm his way inside Tyler, but as he saw me dragging her behind cabins, rubbing sunblock on her peeling shoulders, pressing a kiss over a fresh pimple on her cheek, he just winked at me. 

And it was understandable. He'd achieved his goal. Tittering with other boys in the communal showers, I overheard him boasting about his newfound maturity: he'd gone all the way with a girl. He was sophisticated, a man among boys. Tyler had just been a vessel to aid him in that goal, no hard feelings. 

I thanked him silently. 

–

After languid days in the summer sun, stealing kisses under lake water to ward off suspicious camp counselors, after afternoons of leaning onto each other as the quiet pianist tried her skills on the ukulele and I drummed her back, casting stutters into the soft melodies she was singing, it's safe to say I was smitten.

It was also time to go home to Columbus. 

Sitting side by side on the bus, I found Tyler's eyes drifting between the landscape pulled away alongside the bus, trees growing more sparse as the ride went on, and her notebook, where she kept scrawling, as she had on our way here. 

As I picked a piece of sunburned skin off her shoulder, I found myself apprehensive again. 

I didn't find myself worthy of the fortune I'd stumbled upon. With everything about Tyler feeling like heat, the heat of her mouth bruising my lips, the heat of her hands turning my face pink, with the heat between her legs causing my own to pool in my belly pleasantly, all of Tyler felt like a fever dream. 

At the time I hadn't known that my fever would be chronic, spreading out years into the future, always making me feel dazed and dreamy. 

After a silent bus ride, after arriving in Columbus, before splitting off to find our families in the church parking lot, Tyler pressed an innocuous kiss to my ear and a ripped piece of notebook paper in my hand. 

Her name, her number, a heart underneath. Despite going to different high schools, I felt like I'd finally been tethered to her. 

 

–

In some sense, something otherworldly and primal seemed to bind us together. There was a mutual understanding, like we'd fast-forwarded the years of building up a solid foundation of intimacy and gotten right to the meat of it. 

After each school day, I parked myself in front of the Joseph house and honked until Ms. Joseph sent Tyler out. 

Most of our interactions unspoken but coordinated like a dance. We'd order food, unfold the fast food wrappers around us in a small radius in the grass of the local park and plow through our homework together in silence. 

Afterwards, Tyler would sing. I'd tell her about my dreams, she'd tell me about the songs she was working on. 

As dusk would settle, we'd get in my car and I'd bury my face into the crook of her neck, feeling full and warm with her earthy scent, intoxicated. She'd dot my forehead with kisses, later trailing them over the head of my cock, returning the favors I bestowed on her whenever the watching eyes of our families allowed us. 

Panting and a wide smile carved into my face, I'd drop her off. With the taste of myself on her lips, I'd crawl into bed satiated, alive, infatuated. 

I was introduced to her family as her new boyfriend. At family dinners, her father, ever caring and loving, wanting only the best for his daughter, would grill me with questions about my interests and aspirations, while Tyler would trail her foot up my leg and press it into my crotch. I'd answer the questions, stuttering, red-faced, and he'd take it as endearing nervousness over meeting my flame's father. 

Later, even more red-faced, I'd stifle gasps behind Tyler's open door (a policy in her home) as she bobbed her head over my cock. 

Ever-watchful that their teenage daughter wasn't getting into anything too sinful, he parents still supported us, happy that their morose daughter had found someone who made her bellow out laughter and put up her hair. 

Her mother hovered around her open bedroom door as we stuffed our faces with snacks, held our bellies with laughter and spat at each other with mock anger over Mario Kart. 

She wrung her hands, but she loved the development.

Her brothers found the syrup of our romance stifling, sticking their fingers into their open mouths and gagging around them until Tyler swatted them away. 

Madison found us dreamy, something to aspire to. At night, she'd creep across the hallway into Tyler's room and lay in her bed, listening to Tyler's gushing. Tyler would delve in, telling stories of her fluttering heart and our erotic explorations with a deep pink tint across her cheeks. 

She'd describe our amorous fumbling between sheets, in my car, in the trees behind my house, and, pressing her thighs together, say, “You know what I mean?” Madison didn't. Madison would nod.

It was paradise; it was soft; it was every cliché; it was everything to me. 

You've know how this goes. Every paradise comes to a close with a fall, and this one was no different. 

Tyler likes climbing. 

Sometimes I climbed with her when she found herself plagued by sleeplessness, when she felt raw and worn, and I'd rub circles into her back and pass her a thermos in silence. 

Something about the sunlight creeping over the hill, gently rousing the people of the city, gave her security. Another nightmare gone, the darkness purged, nothing in the shadows to cower from.

Our perch on top of the local Taco Bell was her nest. 

Tyler still climbs, despite her- now his- fall from paradise. He says he needs the perspective, that the awe of towering over a crowd of screaming fans is too moving to forgo just because he had a bump and a fall when he was 16.

Tyler likes understatements.

\--

This night had been like any other. 

Tyler's ringtone had shaken me from sleep. Barely conscious, I'd heard her soft voice suggest an invitation I couldn't refuse: “Come fly with me?” 

Bleary-eyed as I was, despite knowing that I would nod off in my classes the next day, I threw on a sweater, boiled us a thermos of chamomile tea and drove the few blocks over to the Joseph house. 

She'd been waiting for me on the porch, pacing, form tight, arms coiled around herself to keep warm. When she spotted my car, she loped over quickly and let herself fall into the passenger seat. 

Always beautiful to me in some way, Tyler looked worn now, lips cracked, eyes rimmed purple, the shadow on her jaw untouched.

Despite all the ways I'd come to know her, I knew there was something powerful behind her forehead, something vast I couldn't comprehend, something heavy and buzzing, like a swarm of bees. 

Despite feeling so simple beside her, I always did my best to soothe her.

She opened her mouth and released a bee, just one small glimpse of the whole hive distressing her. 

“It's too much, Josh. I couldn't sleep. Sometimes it's just too much.”

Cupping her face, easing my fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck, I said, “Don't worry, babe, the night's almost done.”

She pressed a kiss to my knuckles and smiled.

\--

The railing on the metal maintenance ladder on the local Taco Bell, weathered from years of rain, years of rust, was the butterfly wing in the series of events that would kill Tyler, the girl, or at least put her into a coma, and unleash Tyler, the person, Tyler, the man. 

We'd done it dozens of times. Tyler had done it a dozen more before meeting me. It was always the same building, always the same maintenance ladder.

And it always creaked and groaned but held us well enough until we reached the top.

That night, it held only me. 

I climbed first, which I still curse myself for. I weakened the rung. I was the reason Tyler held onto it, then held onto nothing, then smashed into the ground. 

But Tyler will remind me about regrets. Tyler will tell me it all had to be this way. Tyler will tell me that it was only way to be confronted with the truth, instead of always turning a blind eye to what he feared, suspected. Better to find out at 16 than to come undone with sobs when we'd inevitably try to start a family. It was the beginning of truth, it was the beginning of his meaning.

So, I try not to curse myself too harshly. 

As I was climbing, unassuming, just a little sleepy, I heard Tyler yelp under me. 

I glanced down in time to see Tyler being yanked away from me, growing smaller, being pulled into the ground by an invisible malignant force until she hit the pavement with a dull crack. 

With the wash of panic shooting through me, the adrenaline choking my breath, everything turned into a series of impressions, a series of snapshots. 

Dropping from the ladder and to my knees. Flash. 

Checking for Tyler's breath, wiping blood from the side of her face. Flash. 

Tyler's weak smile. Flash.

Dialing 911 with shaking fingers. Flash. 

Holding Tyler's hand on the stretcher, sniveling, snot running into my mouth. Flash. 

Tyler at the hospital, being wheeled away for a series of tests. Flash. 

Calling her parents, voice quivering. Flash. 

When they finally returned Tyler to me, her transformation had started. 

Her hair was gone. An ugly trail of stitches was clearly visible in the velvet brown that had taken the place of her long locks. She looked fresh, baby-faced, newborn. 

“Tyler?” I managed, weakly gesturing at her hair. The blood had finally started to come back to my extremities. 

She gave me a toothy grin. 

“They said they had to shave part of my hair to give me stitches. I told them to just get rid of all of it. New beginnings, you know? Maybe this was a sign from God to finally let go of old habits, old me.” 

The irony of her words had yet to hit us. 

It didn't take long for her parents to arrive, both still clad in pajamas and robes, both flustered with worry. 

“Oh, Tyler, honey!” her mother cried out, racing over to her, pressing kisses to all the unmarred territory of Tyler's face. 

“Tyler, what were you doing?” her father said quietly, taking the hand of hers not tethered to an IV. He shot a feeble glare my way. 

Tyler just shook her head. “Climbing,” she admitted quietly. 

A doctor joined us shortly. She started her speech about concussions, about stitches, about minor bumps and bruises and scraped knees, about bed rest and painkillers. She ended on a hopeful tone, one about luck, good fortune, nothing really damaged, just a hard tumble.

But when everyone had breathed their sighs of relief, she stayed firmly rooted. 

“I have another matter to address, something we stumbled upon while we were doing routine tests...” she started. Glancing at me, she continued, “Ms. Joseph, this is a highly personal matter, would you like any non-family members to leave?”

“He can stay! He's practically family,” her father interrupted. Tyler nodded, agreeing with her father.

“Alright,” the doctor continued, keeping her formal tone. “Ms. Joseph, when was your last period of menstruation?” 

Tyler swallowed. She didn't look at her mother as she quietly said, “Never.” 

“Tyler?” her mother tried weakly. No one looked at her. 

“We came across some abnormalities as we were dressing you, Tyler. I'd highly suggest we run a few more tests.” 

I held her hand tightly as she nodded in compliance. Shorn and pale, she looked like a lamb being led to slaughter. 

“Alright,” she agreed.

–

Taking her to the hospital was the last time I'd see Tyler in person; Tyler, the girl, Tyler, my girlfriend.

The fall left her bed-ridden, initially, but that wasn't our stumbling block. With our sneaky nightly climbing, we had unnerved both our parents and found ourselves grounded, car keys revoked, after-school privileges cut off for the time being. 

Tyler still kept me in the loop with texts, phone calls. 

She explained the abnormalities, explained what the doctors had started to unravel, although they hadn't divulged a full diagnosis yet. 

“I might go on the pill,” she'd told me. 

“I met with a gynecologist,” she'd started. The stirrups left her feeling vulnerable, the metal prodding into her entrance made her shriek with pain. After that, an endocrinologist. A sexologist, she told me, her blush loud and evident over the phone. 

Later, she told me, “I have a hormone imbalance.” 

A week after her fall, “I might not be able to have children.” Her voice was flat with the admission and I tried not to let my hurt drift through the receiver. 

In between munching on chips, “They took a photo of me today.” 

\--

Everything finally, fully, permanently came unraveled when the interning secretary let Tyler in her therapist's office early.  
   
She was nervous, she was always nervous before her appointments, still unsure of where the recent exposure of her best kept secret, the one she still didn't fully understand, would lead her.  
   
While being sprawled out before the roving eyes of doctors and interns with her legs held high in stirrups made sense, while the drawing of blood made sense, while the massaging probe of an ultrasound technician made sense, she wasn't sure what a week of psychotherapy had to do with the diagnosis of whatever had stunted the feminization of her body during puberty.  
   
So, she nervously paced the room looking at books on psychosexual development, oil paintings of flowers with clitorises, heavy phallic paper weights, until her eyes zeroed in on an open file sprawled across the large oak desk.  
   
She only meant to skim, to chuckle at the offhand observances her therapist had made, but she found herself drowning in the weight of his judgments.  
   
Dr. Novak hadn't listened to word she said.  
   
While answering his questions about her hobbies, interests, passions, he had only remarked on the lyrical tenor of her voice. Talking about her family led to observances of the way she bit her lip, curled her fingers to pick at a fingernail. Her walk, the way she crossed her legs. 

The impression she hadn't meant to make was all there in fine handwriting.  
   
Every little note tried to make a case for her feminization, that her gender had been determined for her by upbringing.  
   
On the subject of her writing, the diary she had trusted Dr. Novak to comb through for anything to aid in her diagnosis, everything turned to an analysis of her circular feminine writing, the bouquet of her prose sometimes mimicking that of Victorian female authors. He even picked apart her handwriting, pinning down the plumply curved letters as something distinctly girly.  
   
Tyler's head swam as she read on.  
   
The only discussions worth marking down were her romantic liaisons, her first kiss, the first time she palmed herself beneath the sheets, the failed penetration of Jordan into her blind-ending vaginal pouch, the full penetration of me into her heart, and all the fumbling we had done between the sheets.  
   
"Homosexuality?", with an arrow, was thrown haphazardly under her accounts.  
   
By the time she reached the diagnosis, she was biting back bile.  
   
"Intersex - Mutation of the 5α reductase type II gene - XY karyotype."  
   
Clutching the desk with white knuckles to steady herself, she plowed through the final notes Dr. Novak had made on her case.  
   
The nail in the coffin of Tyler, Tyler the polite, Midwestern girl with the flat chest, freakishly tall among her peers, well-loved in her community for her pleasant lilting voice and success in choir, was the treatment options:  
   
"Hormone inj----ons," she read, one word smudged by the raindrop that rolled down her cheeks.  
   
The final nail:  
   
"Cosmetic surgery."  
   
Tyler darted out the door, stumbling past the old, stout basset hound of a man, Dr. Novak. Withered by age, he didn't have the reflexes to catch her by the arm.  
   
None of us did.  
   
The girl who had teased Tyler about trying out for basketball had been right. Tyler was so fast, she would have been a natural. Tyler was so fast that she slipped right through our fingers. 

No one saw her for years after that. 

No one would see “her” ever again. 

\--

I wish I could say that I came to know the intricacies of Tyler's nature through our long-spanning relationship of years, how we grew together, grew into adulthood together, but the gap between us spans years and miles.  
   
Tyler left.  
   
And when Tyler left, she stopped answering my texts. When Tyler left, she stopped reading them. A month down the line, my messages stopped arriving at all. 

It goes without saying that I was inconsolable. It wasn't that I wept, or kicked and screamed, or showed any kind of explosive emotion. It was more like a light inside of me had been hushed out, like a part of me had withered. Without Tyler to ignite me with a flurry of emotions, without her to inspire me and shake my core, everything felt like a series of dull, lifeless movie stills around me. 

I couldn't even muster the emotion of betrayal.  
   
I tried to fill the emptiness with weekly trips to the library, with Googling when late-night pining and yearning left me tossing and turning and staring at the backs of my eyelids, drinking in any information linked with Tyler's condition that I could find.  
   
All I knew is what his mother tearfully confided in me. Through choked sobs, holding my hands, she wouldn't give me the full medical diagnosis, but what she whispered was enough. 

"Intersex," I could make out from the babbling of the wreckage of the woman before me.  
   
"Oh, if only she would come home," her father would confide in me at a church potluck. "We could treat her condition. She could lead a happy life. Start a family. Everything would be normal. We'd have our little girl back."  
   
Her parents didn't want to accept her diagnosis. It meant that they'd lost their little girl on two levels, so they treated it like a nasty birthmark or a snaggle tooth. A simple fix, really. Tyler was just hormonal, running away for no real reason, why couldn't she see that? A simple surgery, a series of hormone injections and the ripples she cast in their simple suburban life would settle again.  
   
Tyler's brothers didn't take the news well either. Zak grappled with the idea that there had been an imposter in their midst, sometimes spewing that he was glad she was gone until his mother turned red in the face, while Jay refused to talk about her at all.  
   
Surprisingly, it was Madison who minded the least. She didn't care that the sister she'd confided in for years, the one she'd spent late summer nights exchanging secrets with, the one who gruffly wiped garish lipstick off her face with both thumbs and helped her apply a more complimenting shade, the one who let her borrow skirts and shoes, wasn't a sister.  
   
After Tyler left, we often met after school and meandered for miles, not speaking much, but only mining our brains for any clue about Tyler's whereabouts.  
   
"She always loved music, y'know?" I'd start.  
   
"Maybe she's in Hollywood, the lead singer of some small band," Madison would add, completing my thought.  
   
"Maybe we'll see her on TV sometime," I'd continue.  
   
Mostly, it was a series of optimistic fantasies, meandering without goal, like our walks, about the amazing life Tyler had started without us, to ward off the aching fear, the deep emptiness that she had carved out of us and taken with her.  
   
On a particularly gloomy day of oppressive clouds and the monotonous grey skies they brought with them, Madison whispered to me, "What if she's dead?"  
   
I pretended not to hear her, then.  
   
Tentatively, in between fantasies rolling farther and father away from reality with our almost surreal optimism, we'd bring up Tyler's condition, never lingering on it for too long.  
   
"She's probably… well, can we call her a 'she'?" Madison pondered one day.  
   
"I don't know," I said. I didn't.  
   
"I mean, she could be she, or he, or…it?" The moment her voice trailed off, our eyes met, both sets narrowed, intense.  
   
Lips pursed tightly, we agreed that Tyler would never be "it".  
   
Tyler always asks me if I had suspicions back then. He insists that he always felt like he walking on a precipice, always taut with the fear that someone would find out, find out she wasn't like other girls, find out she was a freak. After our first forays into intimacy, he was sure I knew, that I was simply good at keeping secrets.  
   
Until she left, my adolescent self hadn't known.  
   
My roaming hands followed the valley of her belly, combed through a forest of coarse hair, skated over a stiff peak and dipped between folds.  
   
My roaming hands had been none the wiser.  
   
It's not like I had a lot of comparisons. All I had to work with was the crass descriptions from my classmates- descriptions of fumbling fingers coming up with slick hands.  
   
I knew there was something unique in our dry rutting. I knew I hadn't "gone all the way", a prize worn like a badge among my hormonal, crude teenage peers, but I hadn't minded.  
   
The bliss of Tyler's hands and mouth had been enough of a prize for me, one I cherished and pressed to my chest at night when falling asleep.  
   
Tyler had been a girl to me.  
   
A pretty girl, a lanky girl, with delicate wrists and a lithe, flat-chested figure, big eyes dotted with flakes of mascara.  
   
I didn't care when she peeled off her bra and revealed a chest as smooth as my own. I didn't care when she lamented about the stubble on her cheeks during our third week of camping. She was taller than me, too, but it just meant that I was on the receiving end of more forehead kisses.  
   
I just wanted all of her wrapped around me, always.  
   
I didn't know until I finally punched the word "intersex" into Google and trudged through page after page of "chromosomal anormalities" and "amiguous outer genitalia".  
   
I flipped through image search results until my eyes became accustomed to the sight, even welcomed it. I lingered on those that resembled Tyler, finally understanding why the porn links that my brother shot over to me did little to rile me up. My sexual interests had been conditioned by Tyler.  
   
I now knew the difference, the difference between Tyler and women, the difference between Tyler and men, and maybe it explained a couple of offhand details, but it didn't change how enamored I'd been and how shattered I felt now.  
   
And eventually, flipping through the latest medical journals I'd subscribed to in search of more truth to quench my thirst, despite my lack of experience in the field, or any field, really, I found Tyler herself.  
   
Himself.  
   
But never itself.  
   
Obscured by a black box over her eyes, there was Tyler, hands hanging limply at her sides, skin turned to goose flesh, pale and thin in the medical examiner's lighting, brash and exposed.  
   
I knew it was her before I saw four black rectangles on her chest, the tattoo she'd gotten a month prior, bra strap falling over her shoulder, clinging to my hand to ground her through the pain.  
   
I knew her body like the map of my hometown.  
   
I cut out and pasted the photo in my journal, the only memory I had of Tyler after she was discovered.  
   
I roamed it again and again, looking for something in the impassive pout under the black box, something in the curled fingers at her side. Something, something, anything to let me know that the phantom tug I felt on the telephone wire between us meant something, something, that our connection wasn't unraveling before me.  
   
Weeks turned to months, and Madison and I stopped wandering. Acquaintances stopped asking. Tyler's unsmiling face became a legend on a milk carton.

Months turned to years, and I started to pickup the pieces. I tried to make peace with not knowing, and when I couldn't, I thrust myself into my drums, my schoolwork, parties, anything to drown out the despair I felt as I started to forget the sound of her laugh or when she crept into my dreams and all I could see was her body slipping away from me, crashing, shattering into a million pieces. 

I graduated. I got a job. I played with unknown bands. I dated, swinging between boys and girls, never satisfied by the two opposing extremes, always craving the happy medium I'd found in Tyler.  
   
Years passed, and nothing had unraveled. 

I always felt the tug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also follow me on tumblr (stalk-softly) and talk to me about Stuff, I'm always here to talk about the boys and writing.
> 
> Thanks to edy for inspiring my little bee metaphor; "Steer Me from the Hive of Bees" shook me hard and I love them.


	4. Road

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took long enough, sorry.

With her head pounding and her foundation, everything she had known since childhood, crumbling beneath her feet, Tyler didn't exactly plan the most tactful escape. 

After heaving her stomach empty in a gas station bathroom, her eyes swimming between the "male" and "female" icons on the doors of the restroom of the rest stop, Tyler will insist that everything he did after the fact was impulsive, an act of rebellion that snowballed into an act of self-discovery. 

She, when she fled, he, when he returned, had something to prove. Always on the look out for the truth, always digging deep for the root of everything in her life, Tyler found one truth that cosmetic surgery and pretending couldn't alter. 

She was witnessing a part of herself wither in her hands. 

She knew she had to uproot herself, take her seeds elsewhere and see if she could come into fruition as the person she was, instead of the woman she'd been raised to be. 

The word "conditioning" branded itself into her mind as something she had to corrode, a theory she couldn't embrace, a smug satisfaction she couldn't offer the adults in her life. 

After years of forcing a charade of femininity, of painting her face into a doe-eyed caricature, of plucking her face raw, of trying to find kinship in the tittering soft faces of her peers, Tyler found her diagnosis a shocking relief and the train of thought of her psychiatrist to be hilarious at best. 

Tyler wasn't a girl. 

The freedom of the admission felt surreal, dizzying.

Tyler washed his face in the rest stop bathroom until all the mascara seeped into the ridges under his eyes.

He drove himself home. 

By gingerly scaling through the window of his bedroom, his mother, downstairs, vacuuming to Linda Scott, was oblivious to her daughter, her burgeoning son, coming undone as he stuffed sweatshirts, jeans, a ukulele and the $350 he'd been scraping together for a new keyboard into his book bag. 

Vacuuming and humming along with untapped musicality, Mrs. Joseph didn't hear her daughter upstairs fade into obscurity. 

Tyler packed a Spartan bag of essentials and left behind everything tethered to sentimentality. The cable knit sweater from his grandmother, the drawings from Madison of them both as disproportionately large, pink princesses, his notebook of songs, the photos we took together, blurry faced and kissing, all stayed behind to ensure a clean cut. 

When he scaled out back out the window, he tossed the keys of the family car through its cracked window and made his way on foot.

When he hit the highway, Tyler stuck out a thumb and trudged West until the first big rig slowed down beside him. 

A man, weathered by years of late-night driving, with paper skin crinkling around his eyes and tobacco catching in the spittle at the corners of his mouth, waved at him. 

"Where you headed, boy?" he called out. 

Clad in a beanie and a sweatshirt, his cascade of hair swept into a garbage bin of OhioHealth Methodist, Tyler couldn't blame the man. 

Something in his heart brimmed at being called boy, something akin to the feeling of putting on well-fitting shoes after years of wearing the wrong size, but he corrected him, not ready to try on his new identity.

"Girl," he started, already clambering into the cockpit of the towering vehicle. "And I'm going anywhere that'll take me the hell away from Columbus." 

Revealing yellowed teeth, gums riddled with tiny dark flecks, the man said, "I can do that." 

Nine hours on the road, Tyler did most of the talking. It was Bill's only stipulation; he'd take him as far as he wanted, as long as Tyler kept him awake, so unfettered by the chains of familiarity, Tyler spilled secrets onto the man, released the insecurities he hadn't felt comfortable sharing with his family or his boyfriend. 

"Stubble?" the man said, hiding yawns behind his gnarled hands, "My third wife had that. Don't give it no mind; a little hair don't make or break no woman." 

Tyler would flash a crooked smile and start again, "And you've noticed my flat chest, right, like, I should have known?" 

The man would shrug, passing a hand over his face, flush on only one side from the setting sun beside them. 

"Like Kate Moss?" 

Tyler shrugged, trudging on through the crude list of abnormalities he hadn't been able to share before. The man only blinked tiredly and coaxed Tyler with impassive questions as the sunlight around them began to fade and the road around them turned into a flurry of shooting stars. 

Bill, the man with the old and forgettable face, was the first stepping stone in Tyler's long journey away from his old life. 

They parted ways after a crude eggs and bacon dinner at a small diner in Missouri.

"Hope you find what you're lookin' for," the old man said, clapping Tyler on the back with grandfatherly familiarity. 

Just outside of Omaha, Tyler held on a bit too tightly and wiped his face before answering, "Me too." 

With every state that Tyler crossed, he shed a part of his former gender identity, like a trail of bread crumbs we couldn't follow. 

After trading his mascara for a half-empty pack of Marlboros he didn't smoke, somewhere outside of Kansas City, stepping into a car with a woman, rounded and viscous in all the ways Tyler couldn't be, Tyler didn't shrug away male pronouns. 

"Where's a handsome boy like you headed?" she'd rasped from behind oversized sunglasses, her chin bobbing against her silken headscarf. 

"As far away from Columbus as possible," Tyler had answered, deciding to try on his new identity for size. He didn't correct her, not once, not even when she trailed the back of her meaty hand over his darkening scruff and offered him something with the angular curve of a raised eyebrow.

Lips pulled taut to reveal lipstick-stained teeth, Mindy had answered, "I can do that". 

With Mindy, he chuckled, he batted away smoke and cracked her window, he watched her pick her nails daintily and pressed his hands under his thighs to prevent himself from doing the same. 

In their hours of driving, Tyler found himself doing most of the impassive questioning, most of the nodding and guffawing as Mindy chattered away carelessly. Wherever she was headed, it was apparent she had a score to settle with someone's cousin's sister, something about infidelity, some turbulent relationship to salvage. 

Tyler welcomed the distraction. 

Pressed firmly against her bosom, Tyler and Mindy parted ways outside of a motel in Denver. She pressed a bright kiss on his cheek, which he wore for miles and miles until the man with sweaty hands pawed it away. Wiping his eyes, he'd tapped a few Marlboros into her cupped hands before setting off. 

Not daring to look in the mirror or use his dwindling savings to buy the razors he'd forgotten to bring, Tyler scrubbed himself clean in the Motel 6 and left his padded bras tucked into a trash can. 

The next morning, he took to the side of the road again, a bristling shadow starting to conceal the pink pout of his mouth.

The next driver who slowed down beside him sent a shiver down Tyler's spine, but after hours of mind-numbing boredom and willing any car whooshing past him to stop, Tyler climbed in the passenger seat anyway. 

The man was red-faced, covered in a thin sheen of sweat despite the flurry of snow outside, and constantly dabbed himself with a handkerchief.

"So, how far can I take you?" the man chuckled, small pig eyes darting between the road and Tyler. 

Tyler shrugged and kept his eyes sternly on the road ahead. "As far out West as possible."

The man's right hand took residence on Tyler's thigh. Dabbing away sweat with one hand and the other seeping into Tyler's jeans, he said, "I can do that."

He persisted on with small-talk and awkward questions, marked with a stutter, and soon crossed into territory Tyler didn't really want to breach. 

"You gay or something?" the man chuckled, hands pink, face pink. Everything about him was rosy, every part of him looked tightly sealed away and ready to burst. 

Turning equally pink, Tyler had answered, "Something like that."

After the sun had set and they agreed to take a stop at a gas station, the man had grunted, hand knotted in Tyler's hair, "Something like that." 

Voice garbled by the cock in his mouth, Tyler answered, "Something like that." 

When the man's hands roamed Tyler's body to offer some kind of reciprocation, Tyler froze and made a grab for his bag. Extracting himself from the warm belly of the car and out into the blizzard encasing them, Tyler left with his face dry. 

Somewhere outside of Utah, wiping the corner of his mouth, he said, "Something like that," and slammed the door shut. 

"Something like that," is the answer Tyler still gives to nosy interviewers. When they dig out old high school yearbook photos of his eyes rimmed black, long hair framing his face, Tyler will shrug impassively. When another photo of my hand poised on the small of his back circulates Twitter, Tyler, munching on chips and dotting grease on his screen will Tweet, "Something like that." 

Something, something, Tyler was something, Tyler was a balancing act, Tyler was poised between two extremes, Tyler was both, Tyler was everything all at once, too much for one vessel to contain. 

When it all became too much and threatened to spill over, Tyler let himself burst on stage. 

I'm getting ahead of myself again. 

Beanie tugged over his eyebrows, Tyler walked into the dark, thumb jutting out.

\--

Meandering steadily towards the West, Tyler didn't intend for his final stop to be Las Vegas. 

It wasn't exactly the plan, Tyler tells me now, not that there had been much of a plan to begin with. Settling in Las Vegas, though, definitely hadn't been his intention. 

There was something in the gleam of the lights as they washed over him. Tyler felt like a moth.

The stuttering neon signs, the towering buildings, the constant stream of input was welcoming after miles and miles of empty desert, leaving far too much open space for Tyler's mind to trudge through. 

As the car, a rundown banger owned by a young, alternative couple, wound through side streets lined with garbage and the hollow faces of its inhabitants toiling through them, then bent into the opulent streets of decadence and corpulent tourists with fanny packs strapped around their waists, Tyler knew he'd found his destination. 

A city toeing the line between two extremes, with everyone tipping over to one side or the other, Tyler found a perfect setting for making sense of his own balancing act. Everything was loud and big, designed with the intention of making people forget where they'd come from; it was exactly what he needed. 

Tyler pleaded with the young couple to drop him off on a side street of the Strip, and they willingly obliged, although their sadness at his departure was evident.   
After hours on the road singing to his small repertoire of ukulele tunes, River tapping her wrist of bangles against her leg as percussion, sharing spliffs and fruit picked from abandoned houses they'd passed, there was an amicable bond between them. 

Tyler felt the same heaviness in his chest at leaving the young pair; they'd been his favorite ride out West and a poetic ending to his journey. 

Nosing her dreadlocks and taking in the heavy scent of patchouli mixed with mold, Tyler's eyes were still dry from the thick clouds of marijuana smoke that filled the car throughout the drive as he hugged River. 

"Stay in touch, yeah?" she said, her voice languid, but her eyes warm with affection. Tyler nodded, knowing he couldn't. 

"Hope you find what you're looking for," Robin said, tickling Tyler's temple with his beard as he placed a familial kiss there. 

The lump in his throat threatening to spill over, Tyler said, "Me too," and turned on his heel to weave into the late-night crowds of Fremont Street. 

Without a driver's license or a passport, offering only his high school ID at the check in counter, Tyler was denied a room at all of the major hotels on the Strip. He'd meant to get a touch of decadence before settling for the inevitable toiling amid the streets that he would have to endure without an education or work experience, but it proved futile. 

Tyler settled for a cheap motel on D Street. The tired woman with winding yellow finger nails didn't demand an ID, just a small security deposit and the polite request to not smoke in the one bedroom suite already reeking of stale smoke. 

With $275 of his keyboard savings still left to his name, he knew he had a week to figure out how to swim.

By day, Tyler used the only skills he had to make spare change. 

Used to the harsher winters of Columbus, he didn't mind standing on street corners and playing his ukulele with pink hands. 

Most days he spent being corralled around the Strip by cops with too much free time, most days he ended up on someone's Snapchat story without a dollar placed in his beanie as retribution, but most days, he managed to scrape together enough to buy himself snacks.

By night, Tyler took the small hand mirror from the suite's bathroom and spread his legs. Latent and unaroused, obscured by the dark curls of pubic hair, his crocus didn't look like much. 

He pulled apart the folds, experimentally pressed a finger inside himself until the dull jab of pain in his belly made him squirm.

He palmed himself until warmth spread, until heat engulfed him. Panting heavily and rutting against the swelling lump between his legs, Tyler cried out, cried out at the thought of scalpels shaving away bits of himself, of surgeons tucking away skin, trying to sculpt him into something more demure, sightly, vaginal. 

When he felt himself sick for familiarity and the home he'd abandoned, Tyler cried out.

When his week at the motel started to come to a close and his street-side playing left him with a monetary deficit more days than not, Tyler started applying for jobs around the valley. 

He quickly learned that anything minimum wage and corporate would reject him without an ID, so he steered away from Wal-Marts and 7-11s, preferring the seedy, independent dive bars lining the perimeter of the Strip. 

With his cherubic face, with his eyes wide and naïve and obviously nowhere near the age of 21, with no sort of plastic card to prove otherwise, all of the places immediately turned him down.

After a night huddled around a small fire under an impasse with other, similarly dejected faces, Tyler intensified his search the next morning. 

Even with his brightest smile, even with his personality submerged in syrup, so much sweeter than usual, bar after bar turned Tyler down.

It was nearing midnight on his first day of true homelessness when Tyler dragged his feet into a small bar, unsightly like a zit clinging to the end of D Street. 

It was decently occupied, overwhelmingly filled with smoke, and a woman in unbelievably garish makeup occupied the stage, lip-synching something upbeat and vulgar, something that made Tyler's feet tap, something he would have never been allowed to listen to back home. 

"What can I get you?" the bartender offered Tyler, when he finally chose to perch himself on a barstool. 

"A beer?" Tyler asked, poised for the question that always followed, the question that would send him back out onto the icy streets. 

Without asking for an ID, the spindly man cracked the top off a bottle and set it before Tyler. 

Tyler, in awe, Tyler, never having had a sip of alcohol in his life, Tyler drew hearts into the condensation on the bottle while mulling over the questions in his mind. 

"Are you hiring?" he finally squeaked, unsure that the bartender would hear his request through the general clamor of guests and music. 

Somehow, the bartender heard.

Somehow, he smiled. 

"Pretty young thing like you looking for a job?" he said, propping his head on one winding vine of a hand. 

Tyler smiled. 

\-- 

While I was trying to pick up the pieces and trying to finish my junior year of high school, Tyler took a job in a small drag bar on D Street in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

While I was entering senior year, Tyler started performing songs, with his face painted like a caricature. 

With college applications shoved down my throat and all the adults climbing onto my back to break it, Tyler, mostly naked, painted and garish, started crooning away on stage with his ukulele poised over his crotch, never allowing it to leave, no matter how much the audience whooped. 

While I was throwing my cap in the air, Tyler started accepting cigarettes as tips. While the evident gap in my graduation photos where Joseph, Tyler should have been, burned my eyes and made me choke back sobs, Tyler burned off an eyebrow trying to smoke, choking back sobs.

While I was filling out job applications for Taco Bell and PetSmart, too numb to care about my mother's heartbreak when I accepted the full-time position at Guitar Center, Tyler was primly swatting away the hands on his ass, only to take their owners home for a carefully planned romp, all dim lights, all knees and hands, no reciprocation.

While I was working at Guitar Center, when I'd finally worn off some of the apathy that I wore like a comfortable shroud after Tyler's disappearance, when I'd finally followed through with one of the girls I'd swiped on Tinder, Tyler was dribbling spit over the edge of the Stratosphere. 

His date's ass on his hand, Tyler bobbed strings of spit up and down over the ledge of the Stratosphere, threatening to douse one of the unknowing ants roaming beneath him. 

"Stop that," his date had mouthed into the shell of his ear, a meaty hand planted on his ass. "That's gross."

Tyler sucked the final strand of spit into his mouth while I was finding the courage to take Marissa's hand after a round of coffee. 

While Marissa's fake nails tapping the screen of my phone grated my nerves, while I regreted accepting her number, Tyler traced the only number he'd memorized into the hairy shoulder of his nameless romp. 

It was my number. Even after dousing all his old connections with gasoline, after selling his phone to a coworker for extra spending money, Tyler traced my number into sweaty shoulders, whispered it like a lullaby when hot summer nights left him sleepless. 

I felt the tug. 

I wasn't there, so I can't know what it felt like, but I prod Tyler with questions often enough. 

"I don't know," he says. 

"It wasn't living," he says. 

Nuzzling into the junction between my chest and my arm, he says, "It was something." 

For a couple of years, Tyler lived in purgatory in the same motel, the same smoky room, while pouring his heart and soul into Atomic Liquors by night. 

It wasn't living, it was a far cry from what he wanted to do. It's not that he had it all figured out, at age 16, 17, 18, it wasn't something any of us had figured out, but it was something. 

So, Tyler worked the bar of Atomic Liquors, sometimes opening the stage with a heart-felt song of his own when the line-up was weak. By day, he spent his tips on notebooks, on pens, on new ukulele strings, anything to feed the songs he was creating at the height of alienation, at the height of loneliness. 

It wasn't living, so Tyler made the best of it through songs he couldn't always perform on stage. Most nights, he did a simple "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You" to open the hearts of their regulars, occasionally switching it up with an incorrect reindition of "Build Me Up, Buttercup" for variety. 

Attempts at delivering his own content, of screaming about death and birth and worth, were met with hesitant clapping from the Friday night crowd and derision from his boss. 

"Tyler, people come here to be happy," the young man would say, lips pursed. 

Tyler would nod. 

"Play your own shit on a Monday night or something, yeah?" his boss ventured on, good-natured despite everything. "When there's no one here."

Tyler would nod and comply.

After a regular "Build Me Up Buttercup"- night, things changed. 

An unassuming night cast waves into Tyler's life, the way unassuming nights tend to do. 

After his performance, Tyler gave the stage away to someone far more imposing, someone far more colorful and flamboyant. He made his rounds with his pre-set tray of cocktails until he stumbled upon a beautiful woman, so clearly out of place in the dusky bar.

"I know what you are," the woman with the face made of marble said through the vanishing cloud of her vape pen. Tucking a couple of bills under the cocktails on his tray, she refused to remove her eyes from Tyler's lithe form, clad in only the bare minimum. 

Tyler felt naked under the woman's gaze. 

"You could make a lot more money working for me," she purred, enveloping Tyler's face in a cloud of cool vapor. 

"I know what you are," she repeated, mouth still pooling against Tyler's neck as he quivered above her. 

\--

Without a high school diploma, Tyler was doing well for himself. 

Most days, he found his toes growing crinkled from the warm water, as he submerged his lower half in the basin. While his audience gaped and pointed, some of them slotting in coins so the image wouldn't fade and palming themselves behind the window, Tyler leafed through novels, the pages swelling and bending to the water. 

He kicked his feet, ground his hips against the rounded window. Shaved and peppered by pink bumps, his crocus stole the show while he read about pilots, twenty one of them, crashing to the ground. 

The water was warm, so Tyler felt something comforting, something like swimming in the amniotic fluid of his mother's womb, as he curled around the sea od faux seaweed, pressing his form against the rounded port-hole window of the tank. 

Coins would clatter, the marquee would read "Hermaphroditus," and Tyler would dip his head under water and spin for the anonymous voyeur behind the glass.

Jenna had stolen him from his tireless job at Atomic Liquors. 

Jenna had taken him to San Francisco. 

Jenna had urged him to shave, urged him to plunge into the pool, night after night, posing as Hermaphroditus in her exposition of oddities. 

A night after their encounter at the bar, Jenna had convinced Tyler to come with her. 

Climbing into her sleek sportscar, windows tinted, Tyler had chuckled, "What if you're trying to kill me?" 

Jenna, still exhaling vapor and turning a corner to take them to the highway, replied, "A little late to think about that, don't you think?" 

Tyler smiled. 

Even with her marble face, with her cold business attire, her no-nonsense expressions, Jenna gave him a sense of comfort. Something about her commanding disposition gave him something motherly to hold onto. 

"How'd you know?" Tyler had asked, still hidden in the dim lighting of the bar, crossing his legs over the spandex concealing his crotch. 

"Takes one to know one," Jenna had answered, refusing to break eye contact as she wrapped her lips around the straw of a cocktail. 

Back in the car, Jenna tried to soothe Tyler with her idea of idle chatter. 

"So," she started, "I know for a fact that at least one of us has testicles."

Eyebrow raised, she glanced at Tyler with an unreadable expression. 

Tyler looked anywhere but Jenna. 

Biting his thumb, "I don't really know what I have." 

Years of spilling tears and late-night Googling, I knew more than Tyler. His image torn out of the medical journal and tucked into my poor excuse for a diary, I knew. 

Tyler also had testicles. 

A smile cracked Jenna's porcelain skin. 

"So you're a man?" Tyler ventured on, eyes still poised on the landscape being tugged away from them.

"No," Jenna said, pulling a lip between her teeth. "I'm not a man, I'm not a woman. Something in between."

"Oh," Tyler said, feigning understanding. Having lived most of his life as a woman, then plunging himself into the dark recesses of a bar where masculinity went to hide, Tyler didn't know what she meant. 

Jenna picked up on that, like her piercing blue eyes picked up on everything. 

"If you're ever talking about me," she said, "which, you shouldn't be, considering I'm your new boss."

Tyler gave a small laugh. 

"Just use 'they' pronouns, yeah? Pretend you don't know the gender of the person you're talking about because, well, you really fucking don't." 

"Like, 'Jenna, they're my new boss'?" he said, rolling the pronouns over in his mouth. 

Jenna nodded. 

"Precisely."

As the city around them began to fade into naked desert, Jenna kept talking.

"I had a boyfriend." 

"I never really noticed anything was wrong." 

"Religious upbringing, you know?" Tyler knew. 

"I tried to conceive until my parents told me I'd had ovarian cancer as a child."

At the admission, Tyler whispered, "I'm so sorry." 

One corner of Jenna's mouth curling up, they said, "Look, nitwit, I have testicles, remember?"

Tyler blushed.

"My parents lied to me. For twenty one years they lied to me, hid the fact that I have androgen insensitivity. Imagine my fucking surprise when I see a fertility doctor anyway, because I just want to start a family, and he tells me I don't have a womb. Tells me I have balls," Jenna ranted, sucking on their vape pen, one wrist draped over the steering wheel. 

"You do have balls," Tyler completed. 

They huffed, pushing him gently with the heel of their hand. 

"What did you do," Tyler continued, "like, after you found out?"

"I left." 

Eyes trained on their profile, Tyler answered, "Me too."

Jenna gently placed a hand over his. 

\--

Among bearded ladies and men stunted in growth, among people with clubbed hands and one extremity too much, or too little, Tyler found his refuge. 

He still tells me he never felt home until he ventured into Jenna's small attraction of oddities, until he mingled with other outcasts, other broken people. The suburban familiarity he'd grown up with paled in comparison. 

It wasn't that he didn't miss his family. It wasn't that his fingers didn't itch to dial an Ohio area code when he tossed and turned in bed at night, thinking of Madison's bubbling laugh, his mother's warm mashed potatoes, my lips pressed against the base of his skull. 

At "Isle of Flightless Birds," the largest circus-like attraction in California, he found others like him, square pegs all congregating together to battle round holes, others who couldn't integrate themselves into the delicate mold of able-bodied heteronormativity society had crafted for them. 

Together, they capitalized their abnormalties, made a living for themselves out of the same things that made their families and friends turn away in disgust. 

At "Isle of Flightless Birds," loneliness didn't creep in like it had in Las Vegas. 

For a while, it was living. For a while, it was more than something. 

With two of his coworkers, Tyler started jamming. Tyler pitched lyrics, and Nick wiped his eyes. Chris would nod solemnly. 

They had found a voice for their experiences. 

Tyler and his coworkers, they started playing small shows. Around the Bay Area, Tyler strumming his ukulele and screaming, with Chris beating his drums, with Nick picking his bass, the trio made a name for themselves by night, after "Isle of Flightless Birds" had closed its curtains. 

It was living, and Tyler was happy. 

It was living, until Nick opted out. He claimed to be over Jenna's monarchy, over exposing himself for the cheap thrills of people wearing fanny packs and leaning into him with a selfie stick clutched in their meaty palms. 

Nick enveloped Tyler in a hug and wished him well before disappearing to another state with a prim sweetheart on his arm, with the promises of a more dignified job up North. 

Nick dipped out, and Tyler resorted to synthetic basses, plugging his amp into a laptop at every gig. 

When Chris opted out, Tyler protested fiercely. 

"You're infertile!" he'd cried out, slamming down the lid of the small piano on the stage of "Isle of Flightless Birds."

"Look, Tyler," Chris went on, "I'm starting a family and I can't live like this." 

Biting back tears, Tyler said, "You're infertile." 

Chris said, "I know." 

Chris clapped him on the back and left. 

Tyler pounded his fists into his thighs and ignored the flood of tears cascading down his cheeks.

\--

On an unassuming night, I received a phone call. 

On an unassuming night, everything shook itself off the foundation I'd built after Tyler left, after we'd all lost hope, after the milk cartons stopped running his picture. 

Tossing and turning well past midnight, plagued by the anxious insomnia I always felt before a morning shift, 2451 miles away, I heard my phone start to vibrate. 

Not thinking, I swiped it and pressed it to my ear. 

"Hullo?" I muttered, half-asleep, one foot already firmly planted in my dreams. 

"I'm looking for a drummer," the voice on the other end said. The voice on the other end tore me out of my sleepiness, the voice on the other end shook me awake. 

Years passed, and the lyrical tenor hadn't changed. 

I counted my fingers, praying I wasn't dreaming. 

"I'm a drummer," I said, stupidly. 

I heard his smile on the line. 

"I know." 

\-- 

Years had passed, and I hadn't buried him. 

Years had passed, and I always felt the tug. 

Years had passed, and I felt myself quaking in my boots as I waited for Tyler in The Basement downtown. He'd taken a week off work with Jenna's blessing and flown to Columbus. 

Through text, he urged me not to contact his family. 

Through text, he told me to come to The Basement at 8pm the following Friday. 

At 7:30pm, I was already there, cupping a Redbull in my hands, mixing sweat with condensation. 

At 7:45pm, a gentle tap on my shoulder brought me out of my stupor. 

Tyler. 

Tyler, all stubble, Tyler, wearing a man's costume. 

Tyler was real. 

Tyler was back. 

I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his neck. 

His usual floral shampoo replaced by something more hearty, more masculine, I didn't care. I buried and buried, wound my arms tightly around him, willing him to be real, promising God my total obedience if it meant Tyler wouldn't turn to ashes in my arms as he had, time and time again, in my dreams. 

With a final clap on my back, Tyler pulled away. 

In the dim lighting, I noticed his eyes were glassy. 

"So, you're like," he started, eyes trained on his hands. "On board to be my drummer?"

My own tears spilling over, I nodded furiously. 

"You have no idea, dude." 

\--

I loved Tyler when I was 16, pining over his placid form tapping piano keys in church choir. 

I loved Tyler after our consummation in his bunk at camp, I loved Tyler as we were making out in the back of his family's minivan, I loved Tyler as we sat in silence on rooftops and welcomed the morning sun, I loved Tyler when he whispered verses in my ear, I loved Tyler. 

I love Tyler now in all the same ways. 

But in the years apart, an ocean of miles and years grew between us. 

After our meeting in the bar, Tyler held me tightly and clapped my back. 

A couple of nights later, discussing Tyler's musical ambitions, trading them with my own, finding out that they mirrored, Tyler pressed a kiss to my cheek. 

When I told him I'd fly to San Francisco, when I told him I'd quit my job for his upcoming gig, Tyler planted a kiss against my lips and dove into the nearest taxi cab. 

His final night in Columbus, Tyler invited me back to his place. 

He excused himself to shower while I made myself at home in the hotel room, flipping through the free channels. I munched on a half-empty bag of chips on the nightstand while Tyler showered, until I heard his voice echoing out of the bathroom. 

"Josh?" he called. 

Flipping off the TV, I replied, "Tyler?" 

"Josh," he continued. 

I padded my way to the bathroom door. 

"Come in, " he called. 

I carefully nudged open the door, demurely evading my eyes from Tyler's naked form. Insread, I eyed myself in the mirror, flicked an eyelash off my cheek. 

"Josh," Tyler continued, "Can you help me shave?" 

"What?" I asked myself in the mirror, brows furrowed. 

"You heard me," Tyler said from the bathtub beside me. I had heard him. 

I turned to him, darting my eyes to his face, willing everything inside myself to not roam his body. Out of my peripherals, I saw a Tyler, perched on the side of the tub, legs spread, a fig leaf of foam covering his crotch. 

Hands shaking, I fell to my knees between his legs like an altar boy. 

Tyler handed me a razor. 

I gently raked the safety razor over his stubble, taking care to pull his skin taught where it folded, careful not to nick the sensitive flesh. With my hands gently probing him and my breath against him, I noticed him beginning to swell. 

He watched from above, face unreadable, eyes tired. 

"Why do you shave?" I asked, busying myself with the final patches of dark dusting. I traced a finger over the smooth skin, pink and exposed now. The intimacy felt surreal, so I pressed my palm against him, assuring myself he was here, he was solid, he was spreading his legs for me after all these years. 

"I just like it better that way," he said above me, shrugging. 

I pulled away my hand and nuzzled into the mess of foam and hair, burying my way between his folds, not caring what was getting into my mouth in the process. 

For the first time in years, I felt home. 

"Will you let it grow out for me?" I asked him, my lips moving against his crocus, causing him to shiver. 

"I'll think about it," he said, one hand on the back of my hair. I tentatively dragged my tongue over him. 

"I missed your mouth," he sighed. 

"I missed you," I said, voice muffled from between his thighs. 

Pulling my hair back so I faced him, Tyler picked a pubic hair from my lips and kissed me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to finish this fic, but I couldn't? I think we're looking at one more chapter before I delve into cowboy AUs and hacker!tyler. Thanks for reading!!!!


	5. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, hope you're ready for the final ride.

I quit my job and followed Tyler to San Francisco a week after he visited me. I told my friends and family I was simply going on a trip, taking care not to reveal Tyler's return, like he'd asked me not to do.

I don't need to ask Tyler why he didn't contact his family, why he decided to snatch up only me and take me away to the parallel life he'd been leading. 

I don't need to ask Tyler because I found out a month after booking my flight. 

As he was sprawled across my lap, with my laptop warming the small of his back and I scrolled through flights to book, Tyler said, "You sure you want to quit your job for this?" 

He looked up at me, smacking his lips and licking his fingers clean of the salsa from the Chipotle bowl across from him. 

I couldn't help the laughter bubbling out of me. When I snorted, when my stomach started to ache, Tyler poked a finger into my side. 

"It was a serious question," he said, his own face breaking into a smile, in spite of his serious tone. 

"Tyler, do you really think my minimum wage job is more important than the opportunity to do what I love most with the person I love most?" 

Tyler crinkled his nose, wiggled his ass, shaking the screen of my computer. 

"You have a point," he said, poking his tongue out at me. 

I trailed a hand over the velvet of his shorn scalp, clicking "Book now" with my thumb on the trackpad. 

\--

I want to say it was a beautiful reunion. 

I want to say we ran away together and chased our dreams.

I want to say we made passionate love in his studio apartment every night until dawn, that we stumbled home, sweating and breathless, show after show, staining our lips, each other's lips purple with bruises and wine. 

I want to say we savored all the moments we had together after all the ones we'd missed, biting into them until the sweetness dribbled down our chins, and our faces broke into warm, buzzing smiles.

I want to, but I can't.

I can't because no matter how grateful I was to have Tyler back in my arms, an insidious part of me couldn't forgive him for his absence. 

It wasn't something I noticed immediately. The excitement of tearing up my Ohio roots, just a small backpack and a duffel bag brimming with all the sentiments I could stuff into them to accompany me, flooded away my self-awareness. 

When we landed in San Francisco, I was overwhelmed by the clamor and the sunlight. 

When Tyler took me to the harbor, all I could see was the spray, the salt, the seals. I didn't feel the knot in my stomach until it made me double over with anxiety a little while later.

Tyler said he felt it long before I did. 

He said there was something dampening my smile, that I didn't unhinge into the same kind of unguarded laughter he'd known from me. 

My eyes roamed the city, soaking in the new impressions, and Tyler said I looked tired. 

When he left for work in the mornings, Tyler said I held on a little too tightly.

When he took me to Chris's house to borrow his drum kit for our show the following week, he noticed the way I bristled when he hugged his other friends, when they choked on the Red Bull spraying out of their noses as they laughed at jokes I couldn't understand. 

Tyler noticed the things I tried to swallow, Tyler heard the tiny voice of doubt in my head long before it became deafening to me. 

I noticed it only after I was right in the heat of the fire. 

On a Tuesday morning, Tyler's day off, I awoke with my breath knocked out of me. I'd dreamt of Tyler scaling something high and imposing, of him reaching for my hand, of him slipping out of my grasp. I watched his face twist into fear, watched his body shrink and shrink, watched him slam into pavement, watched his limbs scatter and spray the sidewalk with blood. 

Still blurry with sleep, my hands roamed the sheets for my anchor, hoping I could nuzzle myself into Tyler's warm form and calm my breath. 

I roamed and roamed the sheets only to find an empty, crumpled cocoon. 

The tendrils of betrayal and anxiety wound their way around my throat. I felt like a lover scorned, like a lover burned by infidelity. 

The storm he'd felt brewing inside me came out in full-force. 

Tyler wasn't here. Tyler left. 

Tyler left me all those years ago. 

As much as I knew he was mine to keep now, as much as my rational knew he was just out buying groceries, I couldn't help the way my jaw tightened, the way my heart quickened. 

I sat on the couch in my boxers, stewing in my spite until Tyler arrived home with two take-out boxes. 

"Hey babe," he started, kicking the door open with one foot. "Got us breakfa-"

He stopped when he saw me. 

Tyler says my face was so tight, so pink, that he was afraid I'd burst on the spot. 

Hunched over and clasping my hands together, I said, "Why did you leave?" 

Tyler swallowed, took a tentative step towards me. 

"I wanted to buy us a treat for breakfast," he said. His eyebrows knotted together.

Tyler says he knew what I meant. Tyler says my gaze boring into him like a gunshot wound couldn't have been referring to him going out for takeout. 

"Why did you leave?" I repeated firmly. 

Tyler swallowed again, his expression coming more undone. 

"I don't know, Josh," he said carefully. 

"Why?" I said again. 

Tyler's face broke, the first tears spilling. Although I wanted to wrap him up, to kiss him clean, to rub his back of all the turmoil I was causing inside him, the part of me filled with scorn couldn't stop picking at the wound. 

When he didn't answer me, I asked again. 

"I don't know," he wept before me, looking small, looking lost. 

I asked again. 

"I couldn't stay," he burbled. His speech broken apart, he repeated, "I couldn't stay, Josh, I couldn't-" I stopped him, took him into my arms, held him tightly. 

As we wept into each other, he said, "I'm here." 

Wrapping my arms so tightly around him that he wiggled in protest, I replied, "I know."

Like a lover scorned, I didn't know. Like a lover scorned, I couldn't let go, not right away. 

After peeling off our clothes and licking each other's wounds every evening after Tyler came home from work, with him panting, peaceful, placid on my chest, I'd choke with the vines of resentment cutting off my breath. 

The question was always the same. 

"Why did you leave?" 

With the number of times I chewed it, spat it in his face, I still can't believe Tyler kept me around. 

Tyler tells me now it was the least he could do. Tyler tells me it was justified, after he left without an explanation, left me without any signs of life for so long, the least he could do was stay now. 

"I was selfish," he'll tell me. 

"You weren't selfish," I'll say, placing a kiss on his nose, the cherry on top of my sundae. 

"I was." 

It wasn't the last time I'd shoot out of bed when the other side was cold, unoccupied, when Tyler falling, slipping through my grasp like water and shattering into a million droplets I couldn't piece together shook me awake. 

I'd dart into the living room with my chest heaving. 

Frozen in the act of shoving chips into his mouth on the couch, hunched over his ukulele, Tyler would say, "Josh."

I'd sit down across from him and press my forehead to his, clutching his shirt like an anchor. 

"I'm here," he'd say.

When his hands splayed and rubbing my back calmed down my breathing, I'd say, "I know."

In response to my frantic texts when he stayed after work an hour to chat with Jenna, Tyler would text back, "I'm here." 

"I know," I'd text back, adding an alien, a heart for good measure. 

After our frantic lovemaking, licking away my tears, Tyler would say, "I couldn't stay." 

When my face crumbled into something ugly, Tyler would paint me with kisses. 

"I'm so sorry," he'd whisper, tracing my phone number into my back while I shook.

"I missed you," he'd go on when I started to quiet myself. 

"I love you," he'd mouth against my neck. 

"I," lip bitten, "couldn't," looking up to ward off tears, "stay," he'd croak.

Into the nape of his neck I'd whisper, "I know, I know, I know," snapping my jaw shut before I could spill out, how, how could you leave me, how could you stay away for years, I mourned you, we buried you, Tyler, Tyler- and the flood would be dammed by Tyler grabbing my arm to wind around his waist, it would be damned when I felt the steady pulse of his heartbeat under my palm. 

"I'm here," he said. 

"I know," I said.

Time and Tyler's hand anchoring me to the reality of the now, not the hell of the had-been, slowly started to unravel each knot of insecurity in my stomach. 

Seeing Tyler unleash a whirlwind of emotions on stage, mirroring his passion with my own drumming until salt burned my eyes, unwound the tightness in my chest.

Whether he cradled soft notes, or spat verses, or screamed at the top of his lungs, Tyler always threw a glance back at me, always tried to take me with him on the journey of passion he created in his shows, recounting the winding road of self-discovery in his songs, the one he had traveled without me.

Just like my anger had welled out of me all at once on unassuming Tuesday, at one of those shows, with Tyler sweating and singing and boring into me, the realization hit me all at once. 

I'd been there all along. 

Just like how the ghost of Tyler always tagged along as I was trying to find the will to go out on a second date with Marissa, or lean in to kiss a boy I'd met at a club, haunting me when I went to prom with Madison as a friend, spooking me when I peeled back the clothing of someone "normal", just like that, I'd been with Tyler, too. 

I'd been with Tyler as he shed his female identity, I'd been with Tyler on the streets, I'd been with him as tried on the wrong lifestyle for size, I'd been with him as he dunked himself in warm saltwater and tried to bite back bitterness at the people gaping at his abnormality. 

One night, after dissolving into a mess of limbs and sweat, too tired to shower, Tyler whispered to me in a breath softer than the rustle of sheets. 

"Had to know what I was before I gave all of myself to you," he said. 

I held him closer, flooding my senses with his skunk. 

"I wrote all these songs, thinking maybe we could play them together, maybe you'd understand," he said. 

The only way to show me how much I meant to him was to involve me in his creation. 

I kissed the pulse on his wrist, on his neck.

\--

One night, as I was tucked into the crook of his arm, as we were watching The X-files, Tyler absentmindedly said, "I booked us a show." 

The right side of his face was swollen with the sucker tucked in his cheek. He sucked, not looking at me. 

"Hm, where's it this time?" I asked, not paying much mind. Tyler was constantly booking us shows, worming us into any coffee shop or small dive bar that would take us. 

"Ohio," he said, slurping. "Columbus," he tacked on quickly. 

I shot up from my spot. 

"No way, dude, that's sick!" I was already beaming. The idea of bringing our work, all our creation, back home filled me with excitement. 

Tyler didn't return my smile. He was contemplating something. In the same way he'd known about my tenseness, I could sense that he was chewing on something in his mind. 

"I need you to do me a favor," he said, pausing the show on his laptop. 

\-- 

The show in Columbus had us both filled with nerves like no show that had come before it. 

My nerves came from Tyler's nerves. The way he paced our hotel room with livewires in his arms, begging me every half hour to grab a cab and head over to the venue to prepare, nearly drove me to the brink. 

"Tyler," I'd said, attempting to ground him with my arms around his waist. "It's 12pm. The Basement isn't even open yet." 

He relented and sighed, only to ask me again a half hour later. 

At 5pm, I relented, and we made our way to the club, finding ways to occupy our nervous hands behind the stage with cables, amps, miniature rehearsals. 

It was mostly me doing anything useful, with Tyler ghostly, pale, wandering from wall to wall of the backstage room, picking up a cable or starting to strum something on his ukulele, only to drop the activity when the tremor in his hands wouldn't let him continue. 

"Babe," I said a few times. 

His eyes were on something I couldn't see, something beyond the walls.

"I know," he said. 

I did. 

It was three hours of Tyler pacing like an animal in a cage before the show finally started. 

We both knew this hometown show, however small the venue, however small the crowd, would be pivotal.

With one final shaky inhale, Tyler zipped the skeleton mask over his face. 

I took my seat on my stool behind the drum kit. 

Tyler's nerves, the way they'd been eating him alive all day, they found their outlet on stage. His body danced like it was being electrocuted, a pure expression of the energy inside of him, something powerful and out of his control. 

At some point, he lifted the zipper and exposed his face to crowd. It was red, wet with sweat, maybe with something else, but he shook it all away like a dog after a bath.

When I tore off my own mask and the dark eyeholes weren't obstructing my vision, I scanned the small gaggle of fans in the crowd. 

My eyes landed on a girl off to the side, a girl with her hands over her mouth, a girl who had seemingly brought her whole family to the show. 

Madison's eyes met mine. 

She elbowed her mother, who was idly typing something on her phone. She nudged her father with her other elbow, where he was chattering about something with Zak and Jay. 

Their heads all turned, their eyes all landed on Tyler at the same time. 

I remember the way his mother's mouth fell open.

I remember the way his father steadied his wife with a hand, or maybe, he steadied himself on her shoulder. 

I remember the way Zak and Jay nearly stumbled over each other, clapping each others backs in awe, tapping their feet in time with the music, jumping and alive and hardly believing their eyes.

I remember Madison standing still, I remember the way she wiped away the steady torrent of tears streaming down her face. I remember the way her eyes slowly became charred with mascara streaks. 

I remember the way Tyler looked anywhere but the crowd, out of character for him. He didn't reach out to them as he sang about water, being washed with it, instead crying out to the heavens above. He shook and shook his head to steady his voice. 

When the show ended, he was heaving and drained. 

With the final song in our small set done, the reigns were cut. The Josephs didn't wait for Tyler to thank the crowd, for him to explain that this was his first hometown show, to say anything useful at all. 

They rampaged the stage, almost fought over who could grab him first, who could prove the fata morgana before them had been real. 

His mother won. 

She wound her arms around him. I couldn't make out what she said, I'm not sure Tyler could either, but she was burbling a steady stream into the crook of his neck. Tyler wept back at her, choking out "Mom" and "I love you" and "Mom". 

Madison found her way over to me and threw herself into my arms. 

"Thank you," she sobbed. 

"Thank you for bringing her back," she sobbed. 

"We were right," she said, pulling back to grin at me through all the snot, all the tears.

"We were," I said, my heart heavy. We were, in a sense, right. 

"He's back," I said, holding her close again. 

"He's back," she gurgled into my chest. 

\--

Madison wasn't stupid. Later, all of us crowded on the sofas of the Joseph home, she told me how she'd had a feeling. 

She'd had a feeling when I called her and invited her to a show, emphasizing the importance that she bring her family. 

I'd done my best with excuses, about how Tyler's birthday was coming up, how I could do with the emotional support, how the style of music was something they'd all enjoy, how we needed all the fans we could get. 

"I knew it," she said, shoving me, her face clean now that she'd wiped it. "Why would you want us all there and not invite your own mother? She's friends with my mom, remember? Doofus." 

Despite her playful tone, I blushed. I'd forgotten about my own family when Tyler had proposed the idea to me, asked me his "favor". 

Still, Madison had kept her suspicions under wraps, and with the outcome happening how it did, no one really cared about the details. 

Tyler's mother hadn't let go of his hands since he arrived. She sat next to him on the sofa, doing her best to kept herself from periodically breaking down as he answered her questions about what he'd been doing with himself over the years. 

He kept the seedier details to himself, fed them to me later, but his mother could still hardly picture her 16 year old daughter hitchhiking across so many states, landing in Las Vegas, later in San Francisco. Her motherly worry came back retroactively. 

"We're just so glad you're alive," his father said, on his right, clapping him on the back. 

Zak and Jay were perched across from him, cross-legged on the carpet. They couldn't tear their eyes away, staring at him with fascination. 

Tyler turned to them at some point. 

"You guys are so big now," he whispered, ruffling Jay's hair. 

"I can't believe I missed out on all this," he said, his voice starting to betray him. Jay wrapped him in a tight embrace, while Zak dug his knuckles in his hair, attacking him with a noogie. 

Somewhere in the snot, they all laughed. 

"You're here now," Jay said. 

"Better late than never," Zak said, all toothy grin, no malice. 

"I was right," another voice across from Tyler said. In all the excitement, the celebration and the cacophony of emotions, little attention had been paid to the withered root in the recliner. 

Granny pointed a gnarled finger at Tyler's father, then to Tyler. 

"Boy," she said. "Boy, boy, boy." 

Tyler grinned and raised himself from the couch. He took Granny's face into his hands and kissed the thin paper skin on her forehead.

Always having been coarse, now tinged with senility, she initially batted him away, but I saw her eyes become glassy. 

\--

The rest is history. The rest is something you probably know. Tyler and I, we continued to play music. 

Tyler continued to work out his battles in the form of sound, and I continued to be the root of his music, with my desperate drumming grounding his songs so they wouldn't fly away. 

Somehow, word of mouth spread. Somehow, people picked up on the genuineness of Tyler's voice. 

Somehow, fans started to fan out around San Francisco, all the way over to Columbus, until our second hometown show meant we played The Basement packed to the brim. 

And so on, and so on. 

And Tyler calls his family daily, comes home for birthdays and Christmases, and they all quietly let Tyler, the sullen girl with the awkward form, die. They celebrate the son, whole and happy, back in their arms, their priorities rearranged to be thankful for Tyler- just Tyler, no nitpicking about the details. 

And I hold onto Tyler, just to hold him, knowing he won't slip away. 

And Tyler, with his 3 day scruff, with his floral kimono, he smiles at me and says, "I had to leave, but now I'm back. I can give you all of me." 

And I kiss him and I kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to say that the comments I've gotten on this so far have been so? Wonderful? Thank you so much everyone, it's really motivating to receive all this great feedback!
> 
> I hope I did the story justice with this ending. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! <3


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